[MD] mystical awareness and intellectual explantions

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Kevin Perez <kjp_on_moq at yahoo.com>:

>      [...] if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it
>      becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one
>      doesn't seek the absolute "Truth." One seeks instead the highest
>      quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge that if the
>      past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken
>      provisionally; as useful until something better comes along.
>  
> Pirsig said this (Lila, p. 99) and I've heard it repeated here many times in
> one form or another.
>  
> I see in these three sentences the reason for and the foundation of the
> Metaphysics of Quality.  The bottom line appears to be the MoQ is a
> practical approach to reality and that seeing excellence as the ultimate
> reality leads to seeking "the highest quality intellectual explanation of
> things [...] until something better comes along."  I see the MoQ as
> proceeding from a kind of mystical awareness of reality but ending up
> as the mere intellectualization of reality.  So because it limits its scope
> (or seems to) to intellectualizing reality the MoQ contradicts itself.  I say
> this because I see that an intellectual explantion of reality will never lead to
> a mystical awareness of reality.  But I realize that your mileage may vary.
>  
> Has anyone experienced mystical awareness stemming from intellectual
> explanations?

I don't think there's anything "mystical" in seeking the "highest quality
explanation." If you know what beauty is you know what Pirsig is talking about.
Scientists and mathematicians who rigorously deal with "truth" have often referred
to beauty in determining the validity of their theories. For example, the
mathematician Herman Weyl, described in Wikipedia as "one of the most influential
mathematicians of the 20th century," is quoted as saying: "My work has always tried
to unite the true with the beautiful, and when I had to choose one or the other, I
usually chose the beautiful."

I like the description of beauty as "knowing you're in the presence of something
good." Such knowledge is not symbolic. Nor does it result from intellectual 
explanations. It's intuitive. 

  






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